For the third time this season, the 21-year-old driver from Bogota, Colombia, led every lap on his way to taking a checkered flag in the Indy Lights Series, the developmental circuit for the Izod IndyCar Series.

He did it for 40 laps at Barber Motorsports in Birmingham, Ala., on April 7. Two weeks later at Long Beach, Calif., he did it for 41 laps.

And Saturday at Pocono Raceway, Munoz was out front for all 40 laps to claim the Pocono 100, which is the support race for the Pocono IndyCar 400 Fueled by Sunoco. He cruised across the finish line 16.2247 seconds ahead of Sage Karam, the 18-year-old Nazareth High School senior.

"It was a consistent race," Munoz said. "Just don't make any mistakes."

It was during Friday's open test at Pocono for the eight Indy Lights drivers that Munoz figured out the 2.5-mile triangular track.

He said he was not happy with how the car was performing in traffic. So the team made some changes Saturday morning prior to practice.

Whatever it did, it worked.

Munoz captured the pole in qualifying with an average speed of 188.861 mph. Then when the green flag dropped, he took off and no one could catch him.

"I knew if I was alone, if I can make a gap, I could pull away," Munoz said. "That's what happened."

With the outcome all but decided, the best racing was between Karam and his teammate Gabby Chaves for second place in the final 10 laps.

At one point, their cars made slight contact which resulted in some damage to the front wing of Chaves' car and allowed Karam to finally make the pass for second place.

"We did what we had to do to make it go down to the last couple laps, and Carlos just ran away," Chaves said. "We had nothing for him."

Karam was looking to notch a victory at his home track and said he did everything he could.

"Carlos was really fast and I could not keep up with him," Karam said. "I was flat out the whole race, didn't lift once. Just had nothing for him.

"If we couldn't beat him, the next best thing was to finish right behind him and that's what I had to settle for."

Munoz overtook Karam for the lead in the series standings by four points, 285-281, after seven of 12 races.

Contact the writer: swalsh@timesshamrock.com @swalshTT on Twitter

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